Edie Wadsworth

On Life, Creativity, & All the Pretty Things

October 11, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 5 Comments

I met both Kelli and Wendy at the Becoming Conference this August and what a treat! They are precious and funny and inspiring and I know you’ll love them as much as I do. We were both there giving talks and sharing our heart’s messages, hoping that what God has given us to say resonates with our sisters. After spending the afternoon and delicious supper with them, I can tell you that you will be blessed by the message of their book—that God created us in His image, to be life bearers and makers. Thank you for welcoming them to lifeingrace and thank you, Kelli and Wendy, for sharing your heart with us.

There is a large blank wall in my kitchen, and I don’t know what to do with it.

I stare at this wall daily, trying to conjure up my inner Joanna Gaines so that I can fill it with beauty and whimsy, and…should I put up ship lap?

The wall mocks me. As I stir my coffee, I hear it taunting, reminding me of my inadequacy in all things that deal with decorating.

Sitting down at the computer, I’m determined to find the perfect picture that will give me exactly what I need to fill that wall. I find lots of lovely pictures, but none of them with instructions on how to turn my bare wall into a thing of beauty.

And so it stands, empty.

Much like my friend, Edie, I love all the pretty things. I like things eclectic and colorful and bright. Open windows and fresh flowers are my happy place, and I know beauty when I see it. But I can’t seem to create it on my own.

The thing is, I would call myself a creative person. My head is swimming with stories, my overactive imagination always on high alert. Want a fun bedtime story? I’m your gal.

Want to know how to style your mantle? Keep on walking.

I once thought that creative people were creative in all aspects of life. A good photographer would naturally be a good painter. A good baker would obviously be a skilled decorator. A talented musician must, of course, also be a gifted sculptor.

Somehow, I lumped all forms of creativity into one giant batch and assumed anyone who could create must be able to create anything.

Not so.

I cannot dress my naked wall. I simply don’t have vision for it. But I can write characters that needle their way into your heart.

I can’t paint to save my life. My water colors look like a four year old had a tantrum with a paint brush. But I have an ear for music and can vocalize melodies that incite worship.

Creativity, you see, isn’t an all-inclusive skill set. For many of us, creativity is simply an extension of who we are, but it isn’t all encompassing.

Some women, to be sure, are wildly creative. Art seems to ooze from their pores and seep into everything they do.

Most of us, however, will find our creative niche, and we will thrive there. It’s inside that little nook where we will create all the pretty things.

For some of you, that place is in the kitchen. You make food that looks as good as it tastes, and the process of doing so brings life to your bones.

Some of you have a knack for decorating. If you were to come to my house, you’d have that wall looking fabulous in the blink of an eye. (And if anyone wants to volunteer to do that, I won’t stop you).

Some of you can capture a moment in time with your camera that takes our breath away, while others capture the world with paint and brush.

Creativity isn’t confined to the written word or a vibrant canvas. Creativity is everywhere, flowing out of all of us in some shape or another.

All of life bears evidence to creativity because we were created by a Creative God. We were formed in His image, and we were made beautiful by His sacrifice.

And so it is that we, the created, are the pretty things. We are living, breathing art.

My wall may stay blank, but my computer is filled with stories. This is my art, flowing through my fingers. I am creative.

Are you?

This post is inspired by Kelli’s new book, Life Creative: Inspiration for Today’s Renaissance Mom. Co-authored with Wendy Speake, Life Creative is a message of hope and encouragement to all moms who sometimes feel like they’ve gotten lost in motherhood. It’s the stories of moms around the world who are living out the messy blend of motherhood and art, and leaving a wake of impact behind them. Life Creative is now available for purchase.

*affiliate links provided

When weird worlds collide…

October 6, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 14 Comments

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Last night, I left soup simmering on the stove and went to an alumni dinner for my medical school alma mater.

I usually avoid such things because of the obvious. You know, the obvious things like the fact that I’m not practicing medicine anymore and therefore not much of a donor to the school and totally out of the game of medicine and its politics. There’s also that the small fact that I spend my days teaching people about natural health and essential oils.

But the dean of admissions and my gross anatomy professsor (also now the dean of student affairs) (both of whom were there I was a student and both of whom are precious to me) were going to be there. So, when I got the email, my answer was a swift yes.

As I was driving to the country club my heart was beating fast.

Am I nervous? I thought to myself.

I think I’m nervous.

I never get nervous. Well, I mean, almost never.

It was the weirdest feeling.

Then I started to feel oddly self-conscious. (also not normal for me.)

I took out my Frankincense and dabbed it on my wrist and almost immediately felt more at ease. I reminded myself everything I always talk about here on the blog—you know forgetting about yourself and being interested in other people and not worrying about where you’re going to sit and who you’re going to talk to. In other words, I gave myself a good pep talk.

Once I got there, I was fine. Mostly. It’s a small town, there were several friendly faces, and Dr. Kwas and Doug Taylor were both a sight for sore eyes.

We hugged, we chatted about life and kids and I gave them both copies of my book, since they’re both mentioned in it. I kept fighting back the urge for a whole world of memories to flood in—those formative, crucible years of medical training that broke me and then eventually remade me. I felt hot again.

Funny how, even after all these years, not much changes. Doug was always like a father to me and Dr. Kwas was by far my favorite professor of all time. (That’s saying a lot for someone who has made a career out of learning). Seeing them felt like one of those rare full circle moments— like coming home, being cared for, being known.

We all sat down and began to introduce ourselves and tell about our practices.

This is the awkward part I was dreading.

“Hi, my name is Edie Wadsworth. I graduated from the class of 1998, right about the time my Daddy died and my life fell apart. From there I had two more babies right away and practiced medicine in a small town ER on weekend nights for 3 years, leaving there to practice 3 years as a family doctor in an office beside my husband. That’s when the world is sure I lost my mind again and left work to homeschool my kids. I started blogging and writing, and then became a certifiable Appalachian medicine woman. Nice to meet everyone.”

I mean, that’s not exactly what I said, but I’m sure that’s what it sounded like. It was a bad case of ONE OF THESE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER.

And I’m so okay with that. Finally.

I absolutely can say that I am so thankful for all the twists and turns life my life has taken.

When I first started really exploring natural health and essential oils, it felt like going back to medical school all over again—learning so much that was foreign to me at the time, staying up late at night, reading and studying everything I could find. I watched videos, listened to audio recordings, went to meetings.

Basically, it led me to a whole new lifestyle, a whole new set of priorities, a whole new way of thinking.

And in the weirdest way, it led me back home—to my roots, to the pledge I took as a young doctor, right there in front of Doug and Dr. Kwas, to do no harm and to do my best to bring healing to those God brought in my path.

About the same time I was learning about essential oils, I also was writing my memoir and reliving some of my most painful memories. It was wreaking havoc on me emotionally. I went into a dark season and it took its toll. Thank God for the oils because I know those months would have been unbearable otherwise. I will always associate that period in my life with some of our most powerful emotion balancing oils.

Young Living’s motto is wellness, purpose, and abundance and boy has joining this company given me all three. I’m so very thankful. I now make a full time living working part time from home sharing something that I believe in with my whole heart, something that has given me healing and wholeness and so much more. It’s the best job I never knew I wanted.

To celebrate the weird twists of life and two year anniversary/oiliversary?, I’m doing a “weird worlds collide” giveway!

I’m giving away a free bottle of Christmas spirit, a lavender lip balm, and a signed book to anyone who jumps in with me this month.* (Just click this link and it will walk you through ordering process.)

I promise you that you won’t be the same. When you join YL, you don’t just get a starter kit, you get whole new sisterhood/community and the invitation to a whole new way of thinking about wellness. You get the unbelievable healing power of God’s medicine and (if you want) the chance to share that with other people.

Minus a few awkward dinner conversations, (and even those are pretty humorous!) you are going to be SO GLAD you jumped in.

I’ve said this before, but it’s true. I believe God gave me the gift of compassion for helping others find healing. Sometimes I’ve used medicine and sometimes words and often just a cup of soup or a smile. I think I’m finally okay with however He chooses to use me, no matter how small or how ordinary it is or how awkward it makes alumni dinners!

I’d love to have you join me (you have until October 9th) but either way, I’m sharing an Essential Oils 101 class I taught. Just click the link below.

Click here to watch my Essential Oils 101 Class!

*you must join with a wholesale membership and premium starter kit to qualify!

What if we just jumped?

September 20, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 8 Comments

Two (three?)(four?) summers ago, I stood on the edge of a cliff that overlooks the lake we live on with my daughters, my cousin, my nieces, my sister, and our guys. It’s probably 25 feet high at most but it felt like jumping off the Empire State Building to me.

All the kids took a look over the edge, didn’t think too long about it, then jumped. After a few minutes, I was only left at the top. Everybody else was laughing and swimming in the deep end, waiting for me to find my courage. My daughters kept yelling, “It’s not as bad as you think, Mom, just jump.” And on and on for a good ten minutes, while I hemmed and hawed and yelled over to Stevie about what I wanted at my funeral in case I didn’t make it.

(In case you’re wondering, I asked them to have a church funeral followed by a square dance. If they could bury me in a dress and cowboy boots, with Tammy Wynette and George Jones twanging away in the background, then all the better.)

This was all part of my procrastination scheme so I wouldn’t have to jump. I thought about hiking back down the rocks and swimming back over to the boat and maybe that would have been just fine too. But they’d all stayed in the water waiting for me. I knew I had to jump but I was scared.

I finally realized that the fear was only getting stronger the longer I stood on the edge. While they were all talking amongst themselves and not even really looking up at me, I finally jumped.

Today with my memoir releasing, the feeling is eerily similar.

Here’s what I wrote in the introduction to All the Pretty Things:

On January 4, 2016, my forty-sixth birthday, I am standing on the precipice of Cherokee Bluff, staring down into the cold waters of the Tennessee River. My sister, my cousin, and I, accompanied by our girls, have hiked (in not-so-appropriate shoes) a mile out to see the bluff, as a sort of memorial to Daddy, the man who gave us a life of equal parts blessing and curse.

With the winter wind howling, we cinch up our coats, laughing most of the way, and keep climbing until we reach the infamous spot a relative recently told us about—the place where Daddy pushed a blue Malibu right off the cliff nearly forty years ago. It says so much about our family that this story has just surfaced, not considered even remotely bizarre enough to count of as one of the “greatest hits” we’ve been recounting to each other over the years.

While the bare branches of the dogwoods flail in the frigid gust, I sit down on a rock and dangle my feet over the edge, imagining all the stories that lay cold and swallowed up by the river below, all the pretty things that lay rusted and buried beneath silt and debris.

I think about the book I am writing, the book about Daddy and me.

It’s the story I never wanted to tell.It’s the story I’ve been trying to run from for forty years and the story I’ve been skirting around for nearly three as I wrote. The words in these pages are all raw and fresh and hard-fought. What I don’t want to write about is the thing that scares me to death. What I don’t want you to know is that fatherlessness is my deepest ache, and being untethered and unspoken for is my suffocating fear. These are the memories that have wrecked me for far too long.

Above all, this is the story of my homecoming; the demons that are always holding me back and the legions of angels that keep me safe along the way; the way everything was always falling apart and the beautiful ways God has been piecing it back together; the dark and lonely parts and the parts where God dazzled me with His light shining deep into my heart; the way I was always trying to hide and the way He never stopped finding me.

A sliver of sun is now warming the edge of my face. I stand back up, peering down over the edge of the rocky outcroppings. The view is stunningly beautiful, but fierce and dangerous, too, as the wind whips the river into swirling motion. Standing there, at the top of that drop-off, I think of you, my reader. I imagine that you and I and a multitude of our sisters are huddled together at the edge of the bluff, wondering what it’d be like to jump, to live our lives from the deep end, unafraid to be jolted awake from the sleepy lies we’ve believed about who we are and what we were created to do. I look around and see courage on your face, bravery in your eyes.

In my mind, I take a running start and leap wild off the edge, arms and legs flailing against the free fall, splashing into the deep blue river. For what seems like a long time, I am underwater and everything is in slow motion. But then I spring up toward the light—that same light that is always calling me home.

Breaking the surface, I gasp and choke, and then I cry—sob, even—surprised and thankful that I am still alive, that I have breath. Tears turn to laughter as I yell back up to you who are still poised on the edge of the precipice, “Come on, my sister. Don’t wait until you’re not afraid—jump scared.”

This book is my cliff jump.

I pray it will lead you to your deepest bravery, your most vulnerable self, knowing that your Father who has baptized you with water and blood and fire will turn your sorrow to joy, your suffering to gifts of grace, your terrifying deep waters into soul- quenching cisterns that refresh us all as we walk through fire, together toward home.

See you soon, dear sister.

I’ll be waiting for you in the deep end.

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If you’ve lived too long with shame and guilt about your past, this book is for you.

If you’ve been paralyzed by the parts of your life that have been swimming in pain and loss and chaos, this book is for you.

If you’ve wondered how God could possibly forgive you and love you and make you His own, this book is for you.

If you’ve struggled with doubt and fear and insecurity about who you are and what you were made to do, this book is for you.

This book is for those whose hearts are broken with loneliness, abandonment, and mind-numbing grief and those who just want to feel some sliver of hope.

This book is my song, my strained anthem, my broken hallelujah and it for the mama who fears she’s messed up too much and the daughter who feels she never measures up and the sister who wonders if God has forsaken her.

It is for you and me and for all of us who need healing and hope and resurrection.

It’s me climbing back up the rocks to walk you down because sometimes jumping is not an option. It’s all of us huddled together, promising to give our sisters a lifeline, a much needed measure of compassion, the ever fading benefit of the doubt in a world hell bent on destroying us and seeing us silenced.

Jesus stands arms outstretched as a signpost to us that ALL IS WELL, no matter what our circumstances might say to the contrary. Not because we jump or don’t, but because He loves us no matter what.

He cross is the only way to make sense of this world. The cross is the Father shouting to us that it is FINISHED. His love covers us. He is for us. There is nothing left to do. The forgiveness and peace and hope we long for can only be found in Him.

I pray, if anything, my book turns our eyes toward the One who has promised to get us all home safe.

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As Daddy would say, IT’S HOWDY DOODY TIME!!! Today, All the Pretty Things is available in bookstores and online!! It feels like a long time coming. To celebrate, I’m doing weeklong giveaways on Instagram (cowhide rug, and other pretty things!) and if you use the hashtag #alltheprettythingsbook and take a picture of yourself holding the book and share on any social media channel, we’ll be picking multiple winners on Friday to receive Amazon gift cards, leather earrings, tea towels, and more!

Two more things:

In case you missed it, I did an interview on Friday with my favorite radio show Issues etc. You can listen to the replay.
I’m guest posting over at Melanie Shankle’s blog!

The Place That Helped Me Tell the Truth

September 15, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 214 Comments

The Winner of the giveaway is the 5th commenter, Heather!!!!
If you’ll send me your email address, we can chat about claiming your winnings!!!

Fifteen years ago, when my husband drove me over the Clinch mountains to see the property he wanted to buy where this cabin now sits, there were briars and thickets and wetlands as far as the eye could see. Forty acres of ridges and wetlands and a broken down shack with a still standing outhouse. Every step I took on this “dreamland” of his filled my shoes with water.

He had a vision that this would be the place where we would get away for some good clean country air, where we’d escape when the stresses of life became too much.

The only going through my mind was, “If he thinks I’m spending my precious weekends getting carsick to pitch a tent in this Target-forsaken place, he’s got another thing coming.”

But I was wise enough to smile and pretend like I saw some kind of vision too.

He drove back and forth across the mountain for years to clear the thickets and find a to build a working pond where the wetlands had been, slowly building his dream—a little cabin for us in the woods.

Of course, now it’s my favorite place on earth despite the fact that it’s in the middle of nowhere and the cell phones and computers don’t work too well there.

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Last year, when I was writing the hardest chapters of my book, I took off to the cabin to find my courage. I wanted to tell the truth but it felt like a mountain I couldn’t climb. Maybe if I was alone when I typed the hardest sentence, nobody would feel the earth shake but me.

Or maybe I just needed clear, cool mountain mornings, or less stuff to distract me, or a safe place to say what needed to be said—to somehow settle in with the things that had haunted me for way too long.

My sister cousin, who lived through most of the same hell as me, sent me the following quote that from Augusten Burroughs, “My childhood was hijacked by drunks, pedophiles, and lunatics.” I nodded my head yes but finding a way to write that sentence into a book, with courage and with grace would prove way harder than I thought.

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I sat on the front porch staring out at the tall sycamores that lined the creek just beyond the pond. I starting writing and didn’t stop until I wrote the hardest things. I found my courage in these same hills that had too easily taken my words from me so many years ago.

I faced down the demons that had wrecked me for far too long.

And when I drifted off to sleep under the same black Appalachian night that had so often filled me with the deepest loneliness, I knew I would be okay—that the truth had somehow finally set me free; that the secrets the hills had kept for me would lose their power in the light.

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The truth really does set us free.

Despite the months and years of doubt and worry and shame, I’m glad I told my story.

I hope it will help you tell yours too.

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Leave a comment below, share this post on social media and tomorrow morning, I’ll give away a signed copy of All the Pretty Things, a pair of my leather earrings, along with a free weekend at our cabin this fall (I’ll make you a pot of soup for your first night!) AND a Young Living Starter kit!

Check out the VRBO site for our cabin here!

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Also, FIVE more days left until launch day which means you can still get our preorder bonuses!! Find out more here!

All the Pretty Things, is now available for preorder. It is a story of fatherlessness, of being untethered and unspoken for; the story of how Edie’s life burned down around her in a million little ways and how she sometimes set fire to it herself. It’s the story of how she finally found redemption among life’s ruins in the love of a Father who never lets go.

19 years ago today…

September 1, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 9 Comments

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I remember it like it was yesterday.

After a two hour drive, I walked into the house where Daddy was fighting for breath.

The smell of death and cigarette smoke covered the house like a fog.

Meandering my way through to the back room, I peeked through the door and saw his open mouth, drawn up at the corners like he had just finished the last line of some George Jones anthem. Daddy was in and out of consciousness, and his breathing was erratic. He sounded like he was trying to gargle salt water in slow motion. The only thing I had learned during my rotation as a medical student at the VA hospital was the death rattle, and Daddy had it, of that I was sure.

He was leaving us—and soon.

Sister and I stood on either side of his bed.

I put my hand on Daddy’s damp, stringy hair and smiled at how much he and Taylor reminded me of each other—those blue eyes, wide foreheads, and smiles that lit up a room. His hands were cold, so I wrapped them up in mine and told him to squeeze if he could hear me. A few sec- onds passed and he pried his eyes almost open like it took all the strength he had in the world, the corners of his mouth quaking toward a smile.

“Daddy, we’re right here with you; me and Sister and Aunt Glenda. I know you know how much we love you,” I said.

I thought of a hundred things I wanted to say. I wanted to joke with him and tell him to dance one off with St. Peter when he got to the pearly gates. I wanted to tell him not to leave me like this, with all this life yet to live, so much school left to finish, and two kids yet to raise.

I wanted to tell him to at least stay until I made doctor, for heaven sakes. But I didn’t say any of that. I looked over at Sister, who was wearing more sadness on her face than I’d ever seen, and at her hands mingled in with mine and Daddy’s.

The pauses in his breathing seemed to last forever, all of us holding ours, too, until he eked out another thready exhalation. We strained out a tinny verse of “Amazing Grace” when the gaps felt too uncomfortable to bear. Then I put my cheek to his and told him how much I would miss him and how life would never be the same without him. In the stillness of my breath on his face, I felt the life leave him. I looked up to catch the last light in his eyes, but they were already closed, his head tilted over in surrender.

I fell to his chest and sobbed until somebody unclenched my hand from his and made me walk outside for air.

Daddy was finally at peace.

No more labored breathing.

No more cancer or liver failure.

No more junker cars that wouldn’t start or wayward couches to thrash around on, trying to get comfortable.

No more trying with all his might to stay sober.

No more yearning for a quart of beer or asking for a light for his cigarette. No more hurt, no more loss, no more tears.

Only peace.

Probably for the first time in his fifty-six years.
Waiting for me to be there with him as he crossed life’s last threshold was perhaps his greatest gift to me. The sacred mystery that surrounds death is like nothing else in life, and it is a privilege to walk the last miles home with someone.

It would make me a better mother and woman and a better doctor, and it is my most cherished memory with him.

I knew there would never be anyone else quite like him. I also knew that my complicated relationship with him was far from over.

For as long as I could after Daddy’s death, I clawed at the edges of everything, trying to find a way to stay above water, but nothing seemed to be able to stop my sure and certain unraveling. After twenty-seven years of pretending to be fine, something in me broke—like a dam too cracked and fragile to fight the constant beating rains.

It felt like there was nothing I could do but stand like a spectator and watch the water rise around me, as if every- thing that had buoyed me to the surface of things was gone, even the faith that had once seemed unshakable.

Over the next few months, my life became so unmanageable that it felt like I was trying to survive an ocean storm on a flimsy piece of driftwood.

***

Taken from my memoir, All the Pretty Things, a broken song I wrote for Daddy and me. And for anyone who needs to find some hope to cling to on the hard days.

Preorder now and then claim your preorder bonuses here.

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All the Pretty Things, My Broken Hallelujah

August 19, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 37 Comments

I should probably be more happy or even more psychologically and emotionally stable right now. But, alas, I’m more terrified than anything.

I finally told my story.

I wrote it in an actual book.

It took three years and three complete rewrites.

It’s finally coming out.

I should be thrilled, that’s what they all say.

But instead, I spent most of last week wiping away the leftover mascara I kept crying off, wading through sleepless nights like I did that summer twenty years ago when I burned my life to the ground.

Too many days of waking up after too little sleep, splashing water on my face, reminding myself that it’s all okay now, that those impossible days are over.

Except they aren’t, for any of us, ever, this side of heaven.

Tears are good, I keep telling myself.

I’ve never really been able to tie my life or my past up in a pretty bow so that it all perfectly makes sense, even to me. The last chapter of my book takes place in the cemetery where Daddy is buried, a place I run to more often than I care to admit, even now.

The truth is, life is messier than ever (I think that’s normal) and the place where I was hoping I would have ARRIVED to in my ripe old middle age keeps moving, always just beyond where I am, always an illusion that keeps me thinking some day I’ll have all this figured out.

I’ve written in this space for eight years and almost none of the stories in my book have been shared. You might have found me because I like to post pretty pictures of my house or because I LOVE to make soup. But the real story of who I am I am is a story I never thought I’d tell.

It’s a story of fatherlessness, of being untethered and unspoken for, of spending a lifetime looking for love in every wrong place.

Of watching my life burn down around me in a million ways and sometimes setting fire to it myself.

So many times both literally and figuratively, I have sat in ash heap of my own life wondering how I got there and why there was always so much loss.

But maybe I was asking the wrong question.

Maybe a better question is who?

Who is all this for?

I think I finally know the answer.

This song says it better than I can.

But the short answer is, I wrote this book for us.

For my own healing and hopefully yours too.

I wrote it because I lived too long with hurts that kept me paralyzed.

I wrote because I was tired of running. I wrote it because I finally saw that the path to peace was back through the rubble, back to the people and the places that I call home.

And for you.

I wrote it because I see that look in your eyes. I hear all the things you can’t say. I see the hurt and the questions and the years of heartache. In so many ways, I know how your suffering has bankrupted you because I’ve lived it too.

I know because you’ve told me so, in your emails and messages and texts. Our heartbreak has made us sisters— like people who know some kind of secret language.

I know I don’t have all the answers for you, but God has given me words— a song to sing, a strained anthem, a broken hallelujah.

It’s called All the Pretty Things and it’s the only thing I know to bring to your fire.

Most of time all any of us can do for one another when life is crashing down around us is show up—with a casserole or maybe some cake with buttercream icing (that’s my preferred token of love, in case you ever need to know) and hopefully some words.

But my question is, what kind of words will we show up with when our sister gets cancer or her child dies or the money runs out, along with the hope and the fathers and all the American dreams?

What will we bring to her suffering?

Will we secretly wonder what she’s done to deserve this pit she’s in?

Will we wait for something to be revealed that helps explain the mess and chaos?

Will we be too scared to say the wrong thing and end up saying nothing at all.

(That’s what I’ve done too many times to count.)

Or will we sit with her and sing a song of blessed redemption—while the roof topples over and the side walls crack.

Will we carry her cross when she’s too weak to walk, will we sit with her in the heat and the pain?

This book is a flimsy gift in way, but it’s the one I’ve been given.

It’s me showing up to your fire with a few words, a lot of tears, and a hope that the gates of Hell haven’t been able to smother.

If I’ve learned anything from living my story, I’ve learned that nothing eternal burns so we might as well brave the heat and sit with each other. It’s all I know to do.

Speaking from experience, this fire probably won’t be the last and none of us will ever be the same.

God will use it to burn the scales from our eyes that keep us from seeing Him and all the gifts He keeps lavishing on us while the world blazes.

Nothing is impossible for our Father. Nothing is beyond His repair and forgiveness and restoration. Nothing is beyond His wild and ravishing love.

Let it burn and in the end, we’ll watch for promise of His resurrection.

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I hope my story will lead you to tell your own.

Tell your story, change your life.

I believe it with all my heart.

And a million thank yous for all your love and support over the years. I could not have written this without you.

Love you forever,

xoxo,

edie